What I Was

An old man casts his mind back to 1962 and his time as a 16-year-old boarder at St Oswald's, a strictly run school on the crumbling East Anglian coast. While out on a cross-country run he encountered Finn, a boy living alone in a wooden shack, blissfully free of authority and the attentions of juvenile dorm mates. Seduced by this alternate life of solitude and Finn's seeming indifference, the public schoolboy returned again and again, becoming 'Scheherazade, desperate to keep him amused'. Like all the best teen stories, Rossoff's third novel champions the underdog, allowing us to revel in his wickedly scathing put-downs and outsider status. In slick, colourful prose she blends a gentle coming-of-age love story with a top-notch mystery, keeping you gripped to the very last page.